


Bait and Switch

by Lynnwood



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Party Banter, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 10:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3892948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynnwood/pseuds/Lynnwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bit of a (spoilery) novelization of how the Broody, tattooed elf became part of Hawke's circle of friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bait and Switch

**Author's Note:**

> I had originally intended this to be a much longer, multi-chaptered piece. I was never able to continue it much past this point, but what I DID write I really loved. So I decided to share. Party banter abounds, because it warms the cockles of my heart. Hope you enjoy!

“Do you have a parrot, Isabela?”

All eyes turned to the slender elven mage at that curious, softly-spoken inquiry. The person it was meant for—the Rivaini pirate—blinked in surprise and then let out a good-natured snort of humor.

“What would I want a parrot for?” The tone of her voice, apparently, answered the odd question sufficiently enough. Merrill tried for another.

“What about a peg leg? Do you have one of those?”

“You can see that I don’t, dear.”

The young elf seemed to deflate in on herself, though she gave one last, half-hearted attempt. “Eye patch?”

At that, Isabela finally laughed out loud. “I’m disappointing you terribly, aren’t I? And no hook for a hand, either.”

Merrill’s delicate face twisted up into a pout. “Seems that Varric’s pirate stories are awfully inaccurate.” The dwarven storyteller himself just grinned shamelessly, pretending to be overly concerned with the shadows moving in a darkened alley to their left.

“He knows, kitten,” she murmured, shooting a mock-angry glare at Varric that was largely ruined by her own mischievous smirk. “He likes them better that way.”

Hawke smiled at the sound of Merrill’s disgruntled huff from somewhere behind her. An apostate mage herself, Hawke well knew and understood the dangers that this almost painfully naïve elf faced. Merrill was determined to see the lost histories of the _Elvhen_ restored, her own clan’s opinions on the matter notwithstanding. So much so that she had turned to the dangerous forces of demons and blood magic, and had been forced to leave any and all that was familiar to her behind. Most would have written Merrill off as foolishly stubborn and wiped their hands clean of her as soon as they dropped her off in the alienage in Kirkwall. Many of her other friends and companions had done just that, in fact. Only Isabela and Varric—and Hawke herself—held any sympathy for the dainty elf. Which was why she was very careful to only bring those two along should she ever have need of Merrill’s unique talents. The elf-girl was nervous and unsure of herself enough without Anders’ angry glares or Aveline’s heavy-handed—if well-meaning—lectures fouling her up worse.

“Maker’s teeth,” Hawke grumbled now under her breath, eyes scanning the darkened streets of Lowtown—not exactly the best or safest part of town to be at this time of night. “Where _is_ this dwarf anyhow?”

“Let’s try the bazaar, Hawke,” Varric offered, his quiet tone suddenly holding a new thread of tension. Apparently his idle search had turned up something truly unsavory down that side alley, and was giving a subtle hint that it was time they moved on.

Hawke led her small group in that direction, her hand shifting beneath the folds of her cloak and curling for a moment around the comforting weight of her father’s staff. Inwardly she gritted her teeth in simmering frustration. She hadn’t escaped the Blight in Ferelden, hadn’t lost her father and her baby sister Bethany to that horror, hadn’t endured a year of indentured servitude to the foulest mercenary imaginable, just to fade into death or obscurity now. She had made a vow to her mother, to herself. The Amells would be restored, and the Hawke name would come to mean something in this town one day. Stubborn determination lit every corner of her own frame. In that respect at least, she and Merrill were not so different.

In due time they entered the market district of Lowtown and, finally, Hawke spotted a lone dwarf near one of the carts. He didn’t turn as they approached, so she helpfully called out.

“Are you the dwarf Anso?”

Whomever he was, the dwarf let out a loud yelp of surprise and whirled, his black beard nearly bristling. “Sweet mother of Partha!” he cried, wounded, gray eyes as wide as saucers. “You can’t just sneak up on someone like that!” Isabela and Varric smothered chuckles while Hawke’s eyebrow lifted.

“Er, sorry,” she offered. “I was just . . . looking for someone named Anso. I was told he might have work for me.”

“Oh, yes,” he murmured, visibly attempting to get himself under control. “My apologies, human. I-I haven’t been on the surface that long. I keep thinking I’m going to fall up into that big sky up there.”

“How—?” Merrill began, perplexed, but Varric waved her down.

“Later, Daisy.”

“So, you’re the ones that mercenary Meeran suggested?” When Hawke nodded, Anso continued. “Well, you see, some _product_ of mine has been . . . misplaced,” he hedged, growing nervous once again. “I hired some people to deliver it for me, and they haven’t returned. They seemed like perfectly reasonable smugglers, th-they smiled and everything.”

“Oh Maker,” Isabela groaned softly, rolling her eyes in disgust. Hawke struggled to keep a straight face.

“Point us in their direction, Ser dwarf,” she murmured, “and we’ll get back what was stolen from you.”

Another nervous chuckle. _“Stolen?_ N-no, I wouldn’t say that, exactly. Just . . . the product is very valuable. A-and my client wants it very, very badly. You know how these Templars can be.”

Hawke went very still, as did the others behind her, at that. “So . . . you’re smuggling Lyrium to Templars?”

“By the Ancestors!” Anso burst forth, waving his hands somewhat frantically. “Not so loudly!” As if the boxes and crates around them were hiding a flank of city guard. Then he groaned and rubbed at his forehead. “I’m really not cut out for this. I should have took that job sweeping the stables like mother insisted.”

Hawke frowned down at the dwarf, chewing absently on her lip—a nervous habit. On the one hand, as an apostate it was the height of stupidity to get involved with the Templars in any capacity. But on the other, she _needed_ every coin she could get her hands on to pay her way into Bartrand’s expedition. That meant she couldn’t afford to be terribly picky about the jobs she took right now. Therefore she let out a groaning sigh.

“Alright, tell me where I can find them and I’ll bring it back to you.”

“You will?!” Anso blinked up at her in surprise, then smiled. “Oh, thank you. Ah, I-I believe you’ll find them in a hut, in the Alienage. A-and if you have to kill them . . . well, then I suppose it can’t be helped. But I’m sure they’ll be perfectly reasonable.”

“Oh yes,” Hawke growled to herself a half-hour later, ducking a smuggler’s blade as it whistled overhead, barely missing the opportunity to decapitate her. _“Perfectly_ reasonable!”

Her staff swung out and caught the offending man in the midsection, causing a faint _oof_ of pain. Grimacing with concentration, Hawke drew on the wild and powerful energies inside her and a moment later one end of her bladed staff erupted in fire—channeling the raw power into substance. With a deft twirl Hawke sent that ball of fiery energy lobbing into the face of the man who’d tried to hit her. He crumpled to the ground afterward, dead.

To her left, Isabela twirled out of the shadows and stabbed both daggers behind her, gutting another hapless smuggler. A series of crossbow bolts whistled past on the right, peppering three more who were attempting to muscle in another doorway.

“Bianca, you minx!” Varric crowed cheerily. “That was _beautiful!”_

“Dread wolf take you,” Merrill cried shortly after, summoning a huge chunk of rock from thin air with a sharp, intricate gesture of her free hand and then sending it hurtling into the fray. The smuggler it was aimed at went flying back into the wall with a faintly wet crunch, slithering to the floor afterward and not moving again.

A moment later and the ruckus died down. Merrill sniffed delicately, carefully maneuvering her bare feet around the splatters of blood and dead bodies. “Anso was clearly mistaken. These smugglers weren’t the least bit reasonable.”

“My thoughts exactly, Daisy,” Varric agreed with a wry shake of his head.

“Hawke,” Isabela called out from one of the smaller rooms. “There’s a chest in here.” Hawke turned in that direction. The Rivaini was just rising from where she’d been crouched, looting some of the bodies. Hawke moved to the chest and—after testing it to see if it was locked and finding that it wasn’t—lifted the lid. And scowled.

“The blighted thing is empty!” she snapped, slamming it back shut again.

“Bloody waste of time,” Varric growled, “Who put us up to this?”

“What do we do now?” was Merrill’s soft inquiry.

Hawke stood again, shaking her head and heading for the exit. “I suppose we don’t have any choice but to go back to Anso and tell him.” She shouldered the rickety door open and stepped back out into the alienage, and then froze at the sight of at least twenty armed soldiers surrounding them. A pale-haired woman at the forefront scowled.

“That’s not the elf! Who are they?”

“It doesn’t matter!” another one insisted, reaching for his sword. “Our orders were to kill whoever enters the house!”

“Oh, lovely,” Isabela sneered, then grabbed a miasmic flask from her pouch and deftly kicked it into the thick of them, causing it to explode in a disorienting haze. All hell broke loose after that, though somehow they ended up the victors after several agonizing minutes of battle. Hawke kicked half-heartedly at one of the dead men’s legs in the aftermath, scowling petulantly.

“Maker, what did I do _this_ time? Why does it seem like everyone in this town is always trying to _kill me?”_

“You’re in Lowtown after dark, Hawke,” Varric supplied helpfully, recovering a few of his bolts that were still salvageable while Isabela went on another cheery looting spree. “Goes with the territory.”

“Oh,” Merrill suddenly called, expression pained. For a moment Hawke was worried that she’d been seriously hurt, but the elven mage simply lifted one foot off the ground and gave it a half-hearted wiggle, whimpering. “I think I stepped in something.”

“Come on,” she called, heading for the stairs that would lead out of the alienage. “Let’s give the news to Anso and then head back to the Hanged Man. I don’t know about you three, but right about now I could really use a drink.”

“Do you even need to ask, sweet thing?” Isabela cooed. “I’m always up for a drink.”

Yet they were drawn up short again at the stairs by the arrival of yet another armed mercenary.

“Oh come on, not again,” she growled testily. “This is getting just the slightest bit ridiculous, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know who you are, friend, but you’ve made a serious mistake coming here,” he barked back. “Lieutenant! I want all the men in the clearing, now!”

Hawke reached for her staff to prepare for yet _another_ unplanned and unprovoked struggle, yet hesitated when another figure stumbled into view from around the building. She could tell by his unsteady gait he was in trouble, if not the fountain of blood gushing through the seams of his splintmail from what appeared to be a severed spine.

“C-captain . . .” he managed to gasp before toppling forward dead.

And then something wholly surprising melted out of the shadows next.

It was a somewhat lanky man dressed entirely in black, the guards of his shoulders and elbows protruding harshly in what looked to be metal forged in the shape of razor-sharp feathers. He wore a high-necked, sleeveless long tunic beneath his chest plate, black lined in faded olive green, matching skin-tight breeches on underneath and foot wraps that only covered his ankles and the vulnerable middle of his feet, leaving his heels and toes bare. And almost every inch of faintly bronzed flesh left exposed was laced with intricate white markings. They covered his arms, his feet, his hands, even up the front of his throat and onto his chin. A wild shock of snow-white hair fell into his large eyes, the color indiscernible in the night’s gloom, and also did nothing to hide the long, delicate points of his elfin ears.

But what was perhaps most surprising of all was the enormous sword sheathed across his back. Haft and blade, it was taller than he was.

“Your men are dead,” the mysterious elf announced as he slowly descended the steps, his voice surprisingly deep and articulate and currently deadpan with his shocking news. “And your trap is failed. I suggest fleeing back to your masters while you still can.”

The hapless mercenary captain sneered, reaching out to grab the elf by the shoulder as he passed. “You’re going nowhere, slave!”

Hawke tensed as the elf’s formerly impassive expression twisted into one of utter fury. At the same moment the strange markings on his skin all lit up in brilliant white and blue, and she gasped at the pulse of raw energy she could feel from them. Almost the same feeling one got from imbibing lyrium. Lightening quick the elf spun, knocking the man’s gauntleted hand from his shoulder and shoving him back a step. And then, most shocking of all, the markings on his right arm flared brighter an instant before he literally shoved his fist into the man’s chest. Somehow surpassing armor, cloth and flesh as if it wasn’t even there, the elf was able to reach right into the man’s chest cavity and then with a sharp wrench crushed the man’s heart, killing him instantly. A moment later and the body toppled to the ground.

“I am not a slave,” he snarled softly afterward.

Neither Hawke or any of her companions spoke or moved a muscle, unsure exactly what to do with this new addition. After a moment of collecting himself, the elf turned to face them again. Now standing in a shaft of moonlight, Hawke suddenly realized that his large eyes were a deep, moss green.

“I apologize,” he murmured, calm and unruffable once again, as if the violent episode of a moment ago had never happened. “When I asked Anso to provide a distraction for the hunters, I did not realize they would be so . . . numerous.”

Hawke forced herself to shrug nonchalantly, still not certain whether or not this elf was friend or foe. “No problem. We do this sort of thing often.”

His dark eyebrow quirked upward. “Impressive. My name is Fenris. And these men were Imperial hunters,” he pronounced, rolling his eyes heavenward with a faint curl of his upper lip, “sent to recover a magister’s ‘lost property.’ Namely myself. And though their methods were crude, I would not have been able to defeat them in such number. Thankfully, Anso chose wisely.”

Hawke frowned. “That seems like an awful lot of effort to recover one slave.”

His face went impassive once more. “It is.”

“Does this have something to do with those markings?” she questioned then. That caused a thin-lipped smile.

“Ah yes,” he murmured, lifting his arms out to stare down at them himself. “I imagine I must seem very strange to you. I did not receive these markings by choice. Even still, they have served me well. Without them, I would still be a slave.”

“If they really were trying to recapture you, then I’m glad I could help.”

That seemed to throw him for the first time, and his expression became slightly unguarded for just a moment. “I . . . have rarely met anyone in my travels who thought beyond more than their own personal gain. Thank you. I must ask . . . the chest that was in the house, the one they were guarding. What was inside?”

Hawke blinked a little in confusion. “It was empty.”

“Ah,” he sighed, clearly disappointed. “I suppose it was too much to hope for. Even so, I had to know.”

“You know, Fenris, you didn’t have to lie to get my help,” something suddenly possessed her to pronounce. At his surprised glance she tried for a friendly smile, hoping it was too dark to notice the heat she could suddenly feel on her face. “You could have just asked.”

“Hm, that remains to be seen.” Hawke frowned in confusion, watching as Fenris stepped back toward the fallen captain and began rifling through the dead man’s pouch. He pulled a crumpled sheaf of parchment and glared down at the indigo seal for a moment before tossing it away from him again and straightening. “It’s as I thought. My former master has accompanied them into the city. I know you have questions, but I must confront him before he flees.” He turned back to her, his strangely intense gaze pinning her to the spot. “I will need your help.”

“If it means killing more slavers,” Hawke murmured, as nonchalantly as she could, “then I’ll help.” Again that small, barely-there smile that made her insides quiver for some strange reason.

“I will find a way to repay you, I swear. The magister is staying at a mansion in Hightown, I will meet you there. We must enter before morning.”

And then a moment later he was gone, as swiftly and silently as he’d appeared. Hawke was left staring after him, wondering on a great many things.

“Are we really going to help him, Hawke?” Merrill questioned after a few moments of silence.

“I certainly hope so,” Isabela purred appreciatively. “We definitely need to get to know that one better. Still waters run deep, and all that.”

Varric just shouldered Bianca with a sigh. “More charity work. This won’t get you any closer to Bartrand’s expedition.” Then he shook his head. “But something tells me that crazy elf is gonna get himself killed or worse if he’s left on his own.”

Hawke smiled, reaching down to pat the dwarf on the shoulder before leading the way out of the alienage, turning her steps toward Hightown. “Sorry guys, looks like those drinks at the Hanged Man’ll have to wait for another night.”


End file.
